Hazard of New Fortunes, a — Volume 1 eBook

“Basil! You don’t mean it! Why,
take it! Take it instantly! Oh, what a thing
to happen! Oh, what luck! But you deserve
it, if you first suggested it. What an escape,
what a triumph over all those hateful insurance people!
Oh, Basil, I’m afraid he’ll change his
mind! You ought to have accepted on the spot.
You might have known I would approve, and you could
so easily have taken it back if I didn’t.
Telegraph him now! Run right out with the despatch—­Or
we can send Tom!”

In these imperatives of Mrs. March’s there was
always much of the conditional. She meant that
he should do what she said, if it were entirely right;
and she never meant to be considered as having urged
him.

“And suppose his enterprise went wrong?”
her husband suggested.

“It won’t go wrong. Hasn’t
he made a success of his syndicate?”

“He says so—­yes.”

“Very well, then, it stands to reason that he’ll
succeed in this, too. He wouldn’t undertake
it if he didn’t know it would succeed; he must
have capital.”

“It will take a great deal to get such a thing
going; and even if he’s got an Angel behind
him—­”

She caught at the word—­“An Angel?”

“It’s what the theatrical people call
a financial backer. He dropped a hint of something
of that kind.”

“Of course, he’s got an Angel,”
said his wife, promptly adopting the word. “And
even if he hadn’t, still, Basil, I should be
willing to have you risk it. The risk isn’t
so great, is it? We shouldn’t be ruined
if it failed altogether. With our stocks we have
two thousand a year, anyway, and we could pinch through
on that till you got into some other business afterward,
especially if we’d saved something out of your
salary while it lasted. Basil, I want you to
try it! I know it will give you a new lease of
life to have a congenial occupation.” March
laughed, but his wife persisted. “I’m
all for your trying it, Basil; indeed I am. If
it’s an experiment, you can give it up.”

“It can give me up, too.”

“Oh, nonsense! I guess there’s not
much fear of that. Now, I want you to telegraph
Mr. Fulkerson, so that he’ll find the despatch
waiting for him when he gets to New York. I’ll
take the whole responsibility, Basil, and I’ll
risk all the consequences.”

III.

March’s face had sobered more and more as she
followed one hopeful burst with another, and now it
expressed a positive pain. But he forced a smile
and said: “There’s a little condition
attached. Where did you suppose it was to be
published?”

“Why, in Boston, of course. Where else
should it be published?”

She looked at him for the intention of his question
so searchingly that he quite gave up the attempt to
be gay about it. “No,” he said, gravely,
“it’s to be published in New York.”

She fell back in her chair. “In New York?”
She leaned forward over the table toward him, as if
to make sure that she heard aright, and said, with
all the keen reproach that he could have expected:
“In New York, Basil! Oh, how could you
have let me go on?”